New Pirate Bay service takes aim at EU intellectual property law

We still haven't received a verdict in Sweden's Pirate Bay trial, but the proprietors of that search service aren't twiddling their thumbs while they wait. On Wednesday, they're expected to switch on their paid iPREDator anonymizing service.

Savvy observers of the European political scene will recognize the name's genesis right away -- they're aiming at iPRED, the EU's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, a Swedish version of which went into effect on April 1. Pirate Party chair Rikard Falkvinge memorably described that legislation as "written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility."

Among other things, that legislation allows copyright holders as well as law-enforcement officials to request the names and contact information of accused copyright infringers. In response, iPREDator's version of VPN (virtual private network) tunneling retains no logs -- not even logs of IP addresses -- making it impossible for the keepers of the service to hand over what they don't have.

What they keep is, bluntly put, the money. iPREDator will be a subscription service, costing users €5 each month. Naturally some users, such as a cross-section of commenters on TorrentFreak, have asked whether traceable payments might not undermine the whole anonymity thing, but with no data kept on what any given account's up to, all lawyers are likely to be able to prove is that one has an iPREDator account.